Homily for Trinity Sunday
May 31, 2026
The Fatherhood of God
We spend
a great deal of the year speaking about Jesus Christ, and last week’s Feast of
Pentecost highlighted the Holy Spirit. Today, however, I’d like to speak about
God the Father, the Creator and Ancient of Days.
First,
why do we call God “Father”? God has no gender, right? Correct – God is pure
spirit. But we refer to God as “Father” because in all of creation, there is a
profound archetypical difference between male and female. The masculine is the
giver, the feminine is the receiver. By calling God “Father”, we are
recognizing that God is the source of everything there is, and that He does not
need to receive anything at all.
But how
beautiful it is that we can call God by the intimate familial name “Father!”
Jesus – and St. Paul – took it a step further and called Him “Abba”, which
means Daddy. Every earthly father is given three fundamental tasks: to protect,
to provide, and to lead. Let’s look at that in terms of God the Father’s relationship
with us.
First, a
father protects. God certainly protects us. When the Israelites left
Egypt to pursue a land of freedom, the Egyptians began to pursue them, all the
way to the Red Sea. This so frightened the Israelites that they made plans to
return to Egypt so that they wouldn’t be slaughtered in the desert. But Moses
encouraged them, “Do not be afraid – you will see God fighting for you this
very day!” And He did just that, in a surprising way – God appeared as a giant
column of cloud and fire stood between the Israelite camp and the Egyptians. It
was so terrifying that the Egyptians exclaimed, “Let us retreat! The Lord is
fighting for Israel!” And they retreated, only to be thrown into the Red Sea.
God would not allow His chosen people any harm as they made their way to the
Promised Land!
And we
are the new Chosen People, even more beloved than Israel, since we are a people
purchased by the Blood of His Son. Would God abandon us? Not at all! He
protects us on our journey to the Promised Land of Heaven. Satan would
literally destroy us in an instant if his malice wasn’t checked by the hand of
God.
St. John
Bosco was known for having prophetic dreams. In one famous dream, he saw a
giant ship on a storm-tossed ocean. This ship was being attacked by dozens of
other, smaller boats, with cannonballs destroying masts and blowing holes in
the big ship. On the prow of the large ship stood the Pope, and the saint
realized this dream was about the Church having to fight many enemies
throughout its history. The Pope was trying to guide the ship to a safe harbor,
but the fighting and the storm was fierce, and it looked as if it was going to
capsize. But then, out of the sea rose two giant columns – atop one was a
statue of Our Lady, and on the other was the Eucharist. The ship limped between
the two columns, and found that the sea grew calm and the enemy ships sank and
disappeared. When St. John Bosco awoke, he wrote down this dream with the
interpretation: there would be many storms from within and enemies from without
trying to destroy the Church, but if it remained tethered to the Eucharist and
Mary and led by the Pope, it would never be destroyed.
Hence,
our good Father in Heaven has left us many great protections – not from disease
or war or high gas prices, but from sin and futility and eternal destruction in
Hell, which our Enemy is working tirelessly to accomplish. The great
protections of our King are things like our guardian angels, the Rosary, the
Sacraments, the teachings of our Catholic Faith. These things seem ordinary,
but they are immensely powerful. Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican’s top exorcist
who did over 10,000 exorcisms in his lifetime, said that a good Confession is
better than a hundred exorcisms – it’s that powerful. So we never need to fear any
enemies, either physical enemies or spiritual threats to our soul, if we use
the protections our good Father has given us.
But a
father also provides. Has God not provided everything we need for a rich
life here on this earth? Listen to the great words of St. Augustine, “Some
people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the
very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it.
Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead,
He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder
voice than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you: ‘God has made me!’”
Looking at the beauty, intricacy, and richness of nature convinces us that we
have a good Father who loves us. He has made it so that cows produce extra milk
for humans; He made such a wide variety of food and drink; He made the
mountains tremendous, the lakeside relaxing, the flowers so delicate but
beautiful.
But more
than providing for the needs of the body, He has provided for the needs of the
soul. Who could ever have thought that God would give His own Body for food? Or
that God would make it so incredibly easy to be reconciled to Him in Confession?
He has tried to convince us by so many signs that He is truly in love with us.
Everything we need for our spiritual well-being has been provided for by our
good Father!
Finally,
a father leads. And does not God the Father lead us? As Americans we
chafe at the idea of laws, but laws order human society and point us to
fulfillment. And so God did not abandon us to chaos, but gave us His laws –
first the Ten Commandments, and then Christ’s new Law of love – to teach us how
to live a peaceful, happy life. And He continues to lead us through the Church
He established. The problem is we’re often too prideful to allow ourselves to
be led and taught, thinking we know better…but isn’t this the same fatal flaw
as our first parents?
In sum,
God fulfills all three roles of a good father: He is a protector, a provider,
and a leader. And this has two major takeaways for our own lives.
First,
many of us have not had good fathers in our lives. Maybe we painfully acknowledge
how much our dads failed at protecting, providing, or leading. If this is the
case, realize that our Heavenly Father is meant to be everything your earthly
father wasn’t. The desire for a father runs deep within our hearts. Turn to
your Heavenly Father and ask Him to fill that hole in your life. Even those
with wonderful fathers must realize that our earthly fathers can’t be
everything to us – they can only lead us so far, and then we must take the hand
of our Heavenly Father, Who has promised to protect, provide, and lead us to
Heaven.
But the
second takeaway is for men – pattern your life on the Heavenly Father! Every
man is called to be a father, either a physical father who begets children or a
spiritual father begetting saints. Take up that mantle and that role! Protect
your family from both physical and moral evil – do not let sin into your home
or your children’s minds! Provide for your family – not just by putting food on
the table, but by bringing your kids to the Sacraments and leading your family
in daily prayer. Lead your family – set an example as a man of integrity, and
teach your children how to follow the Lord in daily life. Men, we cannot
abdicate this responsibility to others – it is your responsibility to be
the image of the Heavenly Father in your home!
What a
beautiful thing it is to call God “Our Father”. Can there be any more intimate
name for God? And whether we’ve had good parents or lousy ones; whether we’ve
had our own flaws as fathers and mothers, we look to God the Father as our
model and our true Abba.
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